


The Ante

by IrisParry



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: I do what the heck I want with the Knights basically, M/M, cantina shenanigans, sort of OCs?, spit for lube don't @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 01:33:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11302995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisParry/pseuds/IrisParry
Summary: Three days on the moon, four nights, too many drinks and a couple dozen hands of sabacc, and Kylo had got to thinking it was all a test. It was like a story he once heard from a dead boy, and he knew Snoke had heard those stories too.For the kyluxcantina prompt "He's the one bet you lost."





	The Ante

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a quick and lazy Sunday afternoon [cantina](http://kyluxcantina.tumblr.com) fill, but no! The Knights had other ideas, Kylo drank some more, stuff happened. Hux happened. If you haven't already dropped by the cantina please do, it's a wonderful source of inspiration and full of great reading.

 

Three days on the moon, four nights, too many drinks and a couple dozen hands of sabacc, and Kylo had got to thinking it was all a test. It was like a story he once heard from a dead boy, and he knew Snoke had heard those stories too. They’d say you should know when you’re winning too much, _quit while you’re ahead, kid,_ and that was why Kylo was pushing back his chair and bidding the table farewell, credits in his pockets but not more than anyone had to spare, and some of them gone on a round for losers with blasters on their belts. Kylo was waiting for orders, and it was better to be a gentleman tonight if he was going to come back and take their money again tomorrow.

Kylo was waiting for orders, for the intel to come through, and a handful of knights were waiting with him. If they’d been waiting anywhere else their cover might’ve been blown, but it was hard to stand out here. Everyone’s attention was the wrong kind; not much use in trying to avoid it. Eera still bristled with weapons, vials, wicked hunks of metal, refused to leave anything on the ship, and the fight she’d started the first night just endeared her to the crowd more than anything. Lyric kept their mask on and folded their huge arms and the universal galactic language for “Not today” was mostly understood. Chelch hunched at the bar and told hissed fortunes from beneath their cowl that made most customers buy a lot more to drink, made them a fast friend in the owner. 

The Second was back on the ship. Best place for them. Maybe they were watching anyway, unseeing eyes on the cantina, rolling back in their head as they lay twitching on the bunk. A year and Kylo still wasn’t sure if that asshole was Force sensitive, but he figured it was too late to worry about it by now, thought _kriff you_ cheerfully at them as he clattered through the bead curtain from the back room. They’d loved their old Master, and Kylo had killed him. He was not loved yet, but not dead yet either so there probably wasn’t a lot more to be said about it.

“He’ll get the tab,” Eera was yelling, waving an arm at him as she dealt out glasses like cards. “That one, seven foot of sulk and muscle, he’s with me. Or I’m with him.”

The band was loud and the dancing was wild and the guy was there again, the redhead with the smart mouth, all in dusty black, nursing a tiny glass at a tiny table across the way. Seething beneath his sneer. On his own and looking to stay that way, or so he’d told Kylo the second night. Well, let him.

“He’s the boss. Controls the budget,” Eera jabbered. “Just the essentials, he says. Runs a tight ship. Tight, tight, tight. Isn’t that right?” She cackled at her own rhyme, sank half her ale in one. She’d knocked out a spice pusher that first night, picked up a lot of new friends and a rusty stain to her fingers and nostrils the next. It didn’t do a lot for Kylo. He ran frantic enough anyway. Ale swung things more in the right direction, and he nodded to the young Twi’lek guy behind the bar, took his own.

A wave of energy, soft and insistent, rippling out from Chelch like they’d dropped a rock in the pond, and Eera’s buddies scattered, startled fish.

 _Don’t fret, Master,_ Chelch said, and the three of them heard. _You won more than enough to ruin all of their toxin-processing organs._

“Won’t that be nice,” Kylo said.

“Kiss-arse,” Eera muttered, then brightened again. “Did you though? Win that much? Again? Are they angry with you back there? Did you take all their hard-earned credits? Will their poor children starve if they don’t wait for you outside and try to - ”

“I’m not going to fight any of them,” Kylo told her, surprised to find he’d said it gentle, let her down light. A rumble of amused static came from beneath Lyric’s mask.

He’d thought that was the test, maybe, at first. See how he’d handle a gloves-off, free-for-all, eye-gouging cantina fight, down and dirty, no rules, the opposite of the grave, ceremonial affair that was his dispatch of the last Master. As it was, he’d seen Eera had the business well in hand and let her get on with it. Yet here they sat, a fourth night, and if he’d failed he’d’ve known it by now. If he’d passed he’d have known it by now. Every time it occurred to him that maybe patience was the test, he wanted to cut the bar counter clean through with his saber.

“You won though,” Eera said. “Again and again and again and again and - “  Chelch cuffed her round the back of her head with a gloved hand and she jerked and went on, “- and that’s all great, Master, Master Kylo, Kylo, we’re all friends and comrades here, Kylo, that’s great but are you not getting tired?”

“Tired?”

“Tired of fleecing morons. Bored. Bored of doing your thing - “ here she waved her hands in what was meant to be some sort of mystical gesture, and Chelch’s sibilant laughter slithered round all their heads, “- for something that, in the grand old scheme of things, I mean, no offence, but - “

“I didn’t use the Force.”

Kylo regretted that right away because the three turned to him, almost imperceptibly but all at once, like they were one being in three bodies, their attention a sudden weight. He thought of the Second, thought _kriff you_ , again, but when he put out cautious feelers they all seemed like themselves. It was just like that sometimes, he guessed, and the thought was good to him because it had been like that more and more, the moments when they were like a unit, components in one machine, their power flowing between them. The moments when he fit, in the shoes he had to fill.

Back in this moment they were wondering about him, though, about how a kid of his age got to be that good a card player. They believed him when he said he hadn’t used the Force, without question, and moved right on to speculation. He was not loved yet, but he was trusted. They hadn’t wondered how a kid of his age got to be a good enough killer to take their old master. Kylo took another drink instead of trying to work that one through.

“I wasn’t always a knight,” he said in answer, hoping it sounded cocky and mysterious or something like that, and it must’ve because it broke the spell and Eera brayed like a donkey and clapped him on the back.

 _No, you weren’t,_ Chelch said, and it sounded like they were smiling, or at least like more of their teeth were showing. _You weren’t._

Kylo waved the bartender over again and thought, maybe this is the test. Here he was, sitting in a rowdy cantina full of smugglers and scum, drinking and gambling and wearing old, old clothes. Blending in. Eera blended in. So did the others, just as they were. The Second had no interest in trying. They made places for themselves. They made the world fit.

Red still felt like _waiting_ , though. Hadn’t become part of the furniture like the knights had. Sitting with his feet together and his elbows on his little table, glancing up and around all twitchy like he thought he might miss a shuttle departure. Kept pushing his hair back out of his eyes like he didn’t usually wear it that way. Kylo could’ve taken a look, seen what his deal was, could’ve maybe helped him see his way to being a bit nicer. He didn’t know why he didn’t. Didn’t know if that was something the Master of the Knights of Ren would do.

Lyric laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, shook him out of it. The thick crucible they’d been drinking from was empty, still smoked slightly. Kylo still didn’t know how they did that through the mask, and it would’ve felt rude to ask at this point.

Eera grabbed onto his other shoulder, skinny fingers digging in, and she leaned close. “If you _were_ to use the Force,” she said, in a conspiratorial cloud of chemical fumes, “If you _were_ to put it to use in such a terrible, low matter, just hypothetically… “

Somehow, Kylo heard Chelch smirk.

 

 

Three days, four nights, a heap of frustration and just the right amount to drink for it to seem like fun, and Kylo had used the Force to relieve a few patrons of their credits, their more interesting weapons and a hat Lyric had liked the look of. He hadn’t played sabacc again, but the knights had established rules of a new game and they’d all become players - Kylo and Chelch with their particular methods of persuasion, Eera with cunning, stealth and the occasional switchblade, and Lyric with sheer looming menace on one round only, which seemed to satisfy them plenty.

There was cheating and there was cheating, Kylo remembered, when it came to cards, the kind everyone expected and the kind that made everyone think you were some kind of a monster. What’s monstrous about winning, he was thinking, Tevraki whiskey burning sweet down his throat and in his belly, and the dead boy had thought it too but he’d never said. What’s monstrous about being _better_ , nothing you asked for, nothing you _put on airs_ about, just who you were, in every cell of your body, whether you liked it or not. _Quit while you’re ahead, kid._ If you were always ahead, what then?

Eera was lurking near a table of drinkers, a little feathered species Kylo couldn’t recall the name of for the life of him. They were chattering animatedly all at once and drinking through long straws, their plumage soft browns but lit up in iridescent blues and greens around their heads. Eera’s fingers crept like shadows toward a long feather trailing down the back of one of their necks. Kylo had a bad feeling about it, but not bad enough to stop her.

Red was at the next table, and Kylo took the excuse to look at him some more. It felt almost like winning, like he could have him after all by committing him to memory, conjuring him up at his will. He’d make him just like this, though the man was easy enough on the eye the first night, when he was still clean and clipped and smooth. No, Kylo would have him with dirt under his nails and three days of stubble, looser about the shoulders and swifter with his glass. Fraying at the edges, unravelling, and didn’t he look like he needed that.

Red looked up at him then and Kylo didn’t even startle because, hell, wasn't it just right and proper that this nasty little streak of a man should look at him, should narrow his eyes like he was bothered but not look away. Kylo held his eyes, feeling flush with heat and power, feeling his mouth ease up at a corner into a smile, natural and unthinking. Letting the moment flow. Then he turned back to the bar.

Eera tucked a shimmering greenish feather into the brim of Lyric’s hat, and Kylo duly tossed her the credits they’d put on the task. The credits didn’t belong to any one of them, not really, and it was kind of funny. They all got to win. Kylo grinned again, wider because he could feel red’s attention crawl over his back, his shoulders, tug at his hair. Red was a fake and a liar, a halfway good one. So was Kylo, he supposed, walking up all casual and humble that second night when he knew damn well the man wanted him.

“My turn again,” he said to his knights, and they turned to him as one, as they should. He emptied his glass. “How about you give me a _real_ challenge?” 

 

 

“Four nights sitting here by yourself,” Kylo said, pulling out a chair and turning it around. “I’d say you’ve been stood up, red.” He sat, straddling the chair and folding his arms across the back.

Red put his glass down, drew himself up. “I believe I’ve already turned down company.”

“Not because you don’t want it.”

“Whatever my reason, it ought to be good enough.”

“Tell me to go and I’ll go.”

“Go,” he said, not missing a beat, and Kylo stood up, unfolded himself slow.

“Go,” red said again, sharp eyes following the movement. He darted his tongue out over his lips. “Come back with decent liquor.”

Kylo raised fingers to his temple in a mock salute. It was a test, and he passed easy because he could smell the Corellian brandy on the man, on _Hux_ , who was on the moon on _business_ he didn’t care to talk about and Kylo didn’t care to hear about. It was military, though, that much was clear, from Hux’s posture and the nice blaster he had on him, discreet but at hand in a second, and from the things that flitted across his mind. Kylo didn’t mean to, but with Hux this close and this keen it came to him anyway, boots ringing in hallways, rows upon rows of - of white armour. Well.

Hux was thinking about other things too, sweat-soaked, animal things, blurry like he was trying not to look at them, scrolling by quick only to find more and more of the same. Still seething, only now Kylo could catch something of the depth of it, how he had weapons other than that blaster but nothing that quite felt like _enough_ for what was inside of him.

“Don’t your little friends miss you?” Hux was saying. “Or am I part of the game?”

So he’d noticed. “Game?”

Hux crossed his legs, shifted and settled only to reverse the motion right after, spread his lean thighs a little. His eyes flicked around the room before they came back to Kylo.

“Don’t play dumb,” he said, and that was pretty rich. “It doesn’t suit you. Have you already picked my pocket? Or maybe your prize is a lock of my hair?” He was reaching up and running his fingers through it, smirking while he watched Kylo watch. It was obvious, and it was clumsy, but it did the job. Kylo drained his glass.

“200 credits say I can’t get you into bed.”

Hux snorted, sank the last of the brandy. “Quite right.”

 

 

“Three days,” Hux hissed, kicking the ‘fresher door shut behind him, “Three days, four kriffing nights.” Kylo pressed him up against the door, chest to chest, hip to hip, let him feel how little he wanted to talk. “Four nights on this bloody moon, the hell with it.” 

He’d sensed this in Hux, been drawn to it, beyond his pretty face and mean mouth. Hux’s hands were graceless with his greed and he brimmed with anger, pitch dark and intoxicating, fit to burst with it. Maybe he was the test; the opponent to take down, to drink dry.

“Tell me what you’re doing here,” Kylo said, Hux fumbling with the front of his pants and their faces so close they might’ve kissed.

“I have orders.” His hands were soft and clammy and he got Kylo all the way hard pretty quick, gritting his teeth and looking down at what he was doing. Concentrating. Kylo reached behind him and flicked the lock of the little room. It was damp and close in there, wide enough for the cistern and not much more, and he was already sweating, Hux already drawing deep breaths like the air wasn’t enough. There was something crude, and fitting, carved into the door in Huttese.

Kylo stepped back and sat on the closed lid of the ‘fresher, tried not to think of all the dianoga a place like this probably had lurking down there. Hux followed fast, dipped his head and took Kylo’s fingers when he put them out to get sucked wet, tried to scowl around them at the same time as he scrabbled at his pants to get his own dick out. Kylo could’ve watched him get off like that, mouth full and jacking himself, thought for a minute it was going to happen that quick, but he turned away soon enough, turned his back and shoved his pants down to the middle of his thighs.

Hux braced himself with a hand on either wall, bent forward so Kylo could touch him, slip a finger inside, then two, open him up and hear him pant for it. Kylo could feel him wanting, the raging fire in his head; he leaned in and put his tongue out, licked around his fingers, startled a strangled cry out of Hux. He kept on til neither of them could take much more of it, his jaw aching and his hips twitching up in rhythm, like Hux’s rocked back onto him.

“Hope your legs are stronger than they look,” Kylo said, shuffling his hips forward to make it work better, and Hux told him to shut up. He backed up and took Kylo inch by inch til he was in his lap, his pants pushed down so he could spread his legs wider, his shirt pushed up so Kylo could reach around the front and pinch his nipples, like he was thinking about, like he wanted so bad. Kylo read him easy like this and Hux’s responses drove him on, had him chasing more.

Hux started off jerky on top of him, squatted down awkwardly and distracted by Kylo’s hands, but it got good when Kylo got them into sync, thrusting up to get deep inside, rewarding him when he lifted up again and arched his chest into that touch. They moved together until Hux had to stop, gasping and trembling all over with effort, his head hanging and his hair soaked dark at the back of his neck. Kylo took hold of his hips and kept at it, close but not done with him yet. The walls dripped around them, and the crowd and the music outside were a dull faraway roar, the sounds of their bodies and their raw throats so close and immediate.

Hux just let Kylo fuck him, did nothing but moan and curse and take it, and he must’ve known it wasn’t right, must’ve felt the Force wrap around him and hold him, keep him steady. He mustn’t’ve cared, or maybe that was the feeling he’d needed to really let go because he started jacking himself quick, only a couple of strokes before he was shaking some more. Kylo pulled him back hard, so he could feel it, so he could come all the way inside Hux.

Hux was bright red in the face after, shiny with sweat and all wet round the eyes. He made some half-hearted complaining noises when he stood bit by bit, sore but kind of like he was glad of it. He had a try at cleaning up in the little recessed sink while Kylo sat back and tucked himself away.

“So you’re a Jedi, then.” Hux was washing his hands, back turned, sleeves rolled up.

“No.”

“You’re something.”

“You seemed to think so.”

Hux cocked his head in Kylo’s direction long enough to roll his eyes. “Come back with me. We can get in the shower.”

Kylo looked at him. Kylo thought about his messy face and his ravenous heart, and thought this was how he’d end up dreaming Hux up, really, when he was alone some night and he needed a little something. Hux spent and still quivering with it, and still asking for more. _Quit while you’re ahead, kid._ Right.

“Alright,” he said.

The noise hit them like a crashing wave when Hux opened the door, dull metallic clangs, meaty thuds and yelling in a bunch of languages, and somewhere in the middle of it Eera and Lyric and a half dozen angry blurs with feathers. Chelch sat right where he’d left them at the bar, waving their hands like a conductor to a symphony of cut-off screams, a very definite field of space around them clear of broken glass and spilled ale.

“Are you going to have to do something about that?”

Kylo shrugged. “They’re going to win.”

“They already won your 200.”

“The night is young.”

In the end, they must've been everywhere _but_ bed back on Hux’s sleek little ship. They rinsed the cantina off first, and that felt better than Kylo had known to expect, Hux’s brisk, slippery hands taking him further and further away from the stagnation of those days and nights. Hux got on his knees before they got to the cockpit, couldn’t wait, and the floor must’ve been hell on them but if he wasn’t going to say anything Kylo sure wasn’t. He felt half-mad with the pleasure by the time Hux bent him over, with not denying himself anything of it.

“So you’re First Order,” Kylo said later. He was stretched out on the floor, on a pile of blankets, head pillowed on someone’s discarded clothes. Definitely not bed, definitely a mockery of one, but he couldn't seem to care.

Hux looked over at him lazily from the pilot’s seat, naked and unselfconscious. He narrowed his eyes but it was mostly theatric. He was dangling a bottle of brandy loosely by the neck, lifting it now and then and sighing happily after each belt. “What do you know about the First Order?”

“That you’re high up in it,” Kylo told him, and that much was obvious without the Force, when you knew some of the things Kylo knew. He'd not been exactly sequestered away. “This isn’t a fighter, but it’s no troop carrier either. Well-armed. Impressive sensor array. Specialised.”

“Aren’t you observant,” Hux drawled, eyeing him over the bottle. He drank again, sighed again.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I will.”

“I suspect so,” Hux said, and he had that glittering, hungry look again, so dark and lovely. Kylo suspected a lot of things too.

 

Three days, four nights, and on the fourth morning Kylo walked back up the ramp of his ship and laid down 200 credits on the breakfast table. Eera lifted her head from it long enough to laugh at him.

A chair slid out for Kylo and he nodded to Chelch, who was curled over to shelter their plate from prying eyes. Lyric made a questioning sound, tilted their head, and Kylo nodded again.

“I’ll make contact today. It’s been too long.”

There was a warning hiss from the corner, and Kylo didn’t even get up. The Second shot back against the wall, feet dangling, thick-gloved hands scrabbling uselessly at their throat. All the Knights’ attention was on Kylo suddenly, all turned as one, and he let it flow through him in the Force, at the centre of their energy. He felt the Second’s pulse in their neck, felt the fear and the other thing, dug down deep and found out for sure what it was: the Second was waiting. Had been waiting for him a long time.

“I didn’t ask for your permission,” Kylo told them, flexed his fingers out in front of him, tightened his grip. “Do not test me.” But they had, again and again, and he’d not passed til now. He lowered his hand and the Second dropped, a twitching heap of dirty-grey robes. Silence hung a minute, not uncomfortable, just ... contemplative.

A metallic scraping noise broke it: Eera, pushing a cup of caf across the table to Kylo with the tips of her fingers. He took a sip. She'd got the cream just right.

Kylo was listening to a blow-by-blow account of last night’s brawl when he heard the Second get up and scuttle away behind him, and he reached out with the Force again.

 _Ready the secure channel,_ he told them, almost choked on his caf when an answer came, the voice soft and whispery and almost pleasant. New.

_Yes. Master._

 

 

Four days, five nights; two crucial intel transmissions, one successful asset recovery op; a couple of long, long years. Kylo thought on all of them, lying in _General_ Hux’s bed, watching him drink and sigh like no time had passed at all.

Hux had met him in the hangar of the Finalizer and Kylo had known him, who he was when he was bored and tired and frustrated, when he was tested. When he was annoyed, like he was right now, lifting Kylo’s hand off his belly. Hux had gotten a little softer now he was well past anything like fieldwork, his body at least. It felt good, familiar and subtly new at the same time, and Kylo wasn't anywhere near done touching, feeling him out.

Hux put the bottle on the nightstand and rolled over, propping himself on an elbow. “I suppose you can't still collect on that wager,” he said, smug and sharp-eyed, and he was tracing his fingers over the lines of Kylo’s abs like petty revenge. The flow of the movement was hypnotic, though, and Kylo just shook his head in answer.

“I rather like that,” Hux said, “I’m the one bet you lost.”

It all made some kind of sense to Kylo as he lay there, or enough so he could let it go. A couple credits to start out, before you put the serious money on your hand. He reached out to Hux, thought it was worth the gamble, drew him down and kissed him, soft and easy on the mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> This is very self-indulgent and I'm not sorry. When I was in the middle of it I saw some info which seemed to suggest Kylo may have in fact founded the Knights rather than taken them over and I was just ~shrug emoji~
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr.](http://irisparry.tumblr.com)


End file.
